Monday, August 27, 2007

Darul Ulum Deoband on a Hard Drive?

In a previous email on the Ulama group, Maulana Omar Hussaini of Chicago sent out a very important email to our group which included many beneficialsuggestions. I wanted to expound on one of them. I think it's extremelyimportant that we digitally safeguard the knowledge of our illustrious scholarsand savants. Ever so quickly, the great scholars of the past century arepassing away. We need to save their knowledge and their method of teaching theDarse Nizami books. The best way to do it IMHO nowadays is to record the classlectures on a hard drive.

In other words in one year you can easily store class lectures of 15 books on a100 GB Hard drive. Nowadays, you can even get 750GB~1TB (terabyte) hard diskdrives. In other words, you can store a whole Darul Uloom's classes on oneHard Drive in audio files. Isn't that wonderful? Darul Uloom Deoband orDarul Uloom Karachi or Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama or Darul Uloom Bowmanville (Ikid…) or any other Darul Uloom can easily be stored on one Hard Drive.

I estimate that it would only cost about $1000 (US) (including a good computer and a few mp3 players with voice recorders) to store a Darul Uloom on one harddrive. That's peanuts compared to the amount of benefit we all can derivefrom it. Not only the scholars of this group, but even Darul Ulooms across theworld and their teachers can use these lectures. If we wanted an explanationon a certain Hadith or a Gunjalak (complicated) Ebarat, these audio files could play a huge role in making it easy for us to understand that Hadith or thatEbarat.

The implementation is quite easy as well. Choose a few students from the various classes to record the class lectures and tell them to upload thelectures from the mp3 player to a computer hard drive. I'm sure if we bandtogether and work collectively on this project, we can finalize the major and minor details of this initiative.

The other aspect of this idea is that we should ask the respected Ulama if they have recorded lessons of various classes. Ok respected Ulama. How many of you have stored lectures of your teachers on cassettes or cds? For example on the following site, they have uploaded Bukhari Lessons Jild One of Darul Uloom Deoband which I have downloaded onto cds and I listen to them especially whilst driving. Here's the site: http://www.duroos.net/Sahih%20Bukhari%20Deoband.htm

So Ulama, do you know of any Ulama who have recorded lessons? I know that Maulana Ismail Mayat of Batley, a teacher at Dewsbury, recorded Maulana Izharul Hasan's Dawrah Hadith lectures on many cassettes. Sheikhul Hadith Maulana Zakariyya (R.A.) had two beloved students and one of them was Maulana Izhar(R.A.) who was a teacher at Nizamuddin Markaz. He was even requested by DarulUloom Deoband to come and teach at Darul Uloom Deoband but he had politely refused and continued teaching at Nizamuddin Markaz till the final day of his life.

Insha Allah I hope this initiative will one day see the light of day and we will be able to benefit from scholars from all across the world. The Darul Ulooms themselves should take up this task and record the lectures of their staff which would make it easy for us to collect them under one website.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Awesome Architecture Brunei Moque

FW: Awesome Architecture - Brunei MosqueSultan Omar Ali Saifuddin MosqueBuilt:1958Cost:USD $5,000,000.00Type:Holy placeObservation deck:YesLocation:Kampong Ayer, Bandar Seri Begawan (formerly Brunei Town)· A mazing in appearance, but too beautiful to be true, The Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque is Brunei's proudest architectural achievement. It sits on an artificial lagoon near the Brunei River in Kampong Ayer, which is appropriately enough, known as a "water village." A structure in the water that resembles a ship was at one time used for official state ceremonies. The mosque is the largest in the Far East, and considered among the most beautiful in the world. It reaches a height of 52 meters and is topped with a gold dome supported by walls of Italian marble, which also forms the mosque's columns, arches, and towers. The stained glass was hand made in England and the carpets are Saudi Arabian.